SEO Services Vs SEM

Many of the business owners and marketing professionals are confused between SEO Services and SEM and many a times find it difficult to decide whether they should opt for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Search Engine Marketing (SEM). We would not only try to differentiate between the two but would also clear the confusion as to which of the two one should opt for.

SEO Services is the process of optimizing a website so that it ranks higher on a search engine to bring FREE traffic to a website and hence generate quality inquiries for the website owner. SEM is also the process of increasing the visibility of a website on search engines and bringing traffic to a website but it involves tools other than SEO. SEO is a subset of SEM. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a broader term and it involves not only SEO but also paid advertising on search engines like pay-per-click (PPC) including Adwords of Google which is the most popular form of paid advertisement on internet.

SEO or SEM inquiries are high quality

A very important fact about SEO or SEM is that instead of you trying to find a customer, the customer would find you. Another primary advantage of SEO or SEM is that they are targeted in terms of products/services or location etc.
So, a business owner should give a lot of weightage or importance to inquiries received from SEO or SEM as compared to other forms of advertisement. There would be a very high degree of probability that inquiries received from search engines would get confirmed.

Advantages and disadvantages of SEO and SEM

Now that the difference between the two is clear, we would try to give you the main parameters which would help you decide whether you should opt for SEO or SEM.

Cost

SEM would be costly as compared to SEO as it involves paid advertisement like PPC. The total cost of SEM would be determined based on the total number of clicks on the advertisement on search engine. If your website is at top ranking through SEO, the click on your website would be free of cost and hence the total budget for SEM would be much higher than SEO. But the biggest question mark is that it is not easy to get top rankings on google through SEO and hence selecting the right SEO company is of paramount importance

Time Taken

SEM is very fast and it can be started within few hours while SEO would take minimum 3-4 months to appear on top ranking on google and other search engine. So if the requirement is urgent, one should opt for SEM otherwise SEO is the best option.